Metaverse Mall Rats and the Return of the Branded Hangout
It started with a ping. A friend invited me to a Roblox launch party for a beverage brand I won’t name because, well, I’m still emotionally recovering. Picture this: my avatar is standing among 200 other tween-coded humans in a virtual skatepark, waiting for a DJ who never shows up, streaming music from a Spotify playlist that’s two weeks behind TikTok trends.
Yet here’s the thing: every brand and their CFO seems convinced the metaverse is where tomorrow’s loyalty lives. But nostalgia is a hell of a drug. What I saw in that pixelated purgatory looked less like marketing innovation and more like a reboot of the brand-sponsored mall of the early 2000s. Remember those? When the coolest place to kill time after school was a branded ice cream kiosk with free stickers and a photo booth? Not everything old should be reborn in VR tights.
But maybe I’m being snippy. There’s a kernel of genius buried in all this over-rendered chaos. The idea of a branded hangout, a place where customers don’t feel like customers, just exists. That’s powerful. The problem is that most of these virtual brand spaces are designed like marketing interns' fever dreams of what Gen Alpha might like. Lava lamps, neon signage, and a DJ whose only credential is owning headphones. If we’re serious about digital brand environments, maybe we stop trying to build theme parks and start fostering third spaces. Quiet places. Weird ones. Places to do nothing in particular. Like a branded laundromat for avatars. Or a virtual dog park where no one actually owns a dog.
If the metaverse is going to work for marketers, it needs to stop trying so hard. Get weird. Get small. Let people hang out. And above all, please, no more VR balloon drops.
Yet here’s the thing: every brand and their CFO seems convinced the metaverse is where tomorrow’s loyalty lives. But nostalgia is a hell of a drug. What I saw in that pixelated purgatory looked less like marketing innovation and more like a reboot of the brand-sponsored mall of the early 2000s. Remember those? When the coolest place to kill time after school was a branded ice cream kiosk with free stickers and a photo booth? Not everything old should be reborn in VR tights.
But maybe I’m being snippy. There’s a kernel of genius buried in all this over-rendered chaos. The idea of a branded hangout, a place where customers don’t feel like customers, just exists. That’s powerful. The problem is that most of these virtual brand spaces are designed like marketing interns' fever dreams of what Gen Alpha might like. Lava lamps, neon signage, and a DJ whose only credential is owning headphones. If we’re serious about digital brand environments, maybe we stop trying to build theme parks and start fostering third spaces. Quiet places. Weird ones. Places to do nothing in particular. Like a branded laundromat for avatars. Or a virtual dog park where no one actually owns a dog.
If the metaverse is going to work for marketers, it needs to stop trying so hard. Get weird. Get small. Let people hang out. And above all, please, no more VR balloon drops.